"So far, Twitter Core App has been cancelled due to negotiations with Twitter. So, disappointingly, official Twitter app will be a browser pointed at m.twitter.com," he said.

The news -- first reported by OMGUbuntu -- is likely to be viewed as a black eye for the dedicated mobile version of the popular Linux-based operating system. Social media integration was featured prominently in official screenshots, and social content was designed to be deeply embedded in many core features.

Later messages posted to the mailing list by Park -- who has worked on the open-source social media app Gwibber for the past eight months -- indicate that the use of Twitter trademarks on an Ubuntu-native app were the sticking point in the negotiations.

The good news for Ubuntu Touch fans is that the collapse of the deal for an official Twitter app probably won't affect the inbuilt social media features present in the OS itself, which use the Friends engine that was developed by Park for the new version of Gwibber.

"Today, Gwibber is a very lightweight Qml app that wraps around our new social media aggregator that we are calling Friends. Friends itself has no UI, it simply does the heavy lifting of sending, receiving, and aggregating tweets/facebook posts/flickr images/etc," he wrote.

This isn't the first time that partnership negotiations have put Ubuntu Touch in the headlines -- an Australian company that recently offered highly speculative pre-orders for an Ubuntu tablet said that it had been rebuffed in its attempts to become an official Canonical partner for the launch.

Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.